


Soulless

by Snakespeare



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Gen, Gen Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 08:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4660410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snakespeare/pseuds/Snakespeare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People say the Black Widow has no dæmon. They whisper of experiments in the North and little girls found frozen in snowdrifts. She is a witch, they say. She is a ghast, others argue. She is a monster, they agree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Enemies

Clint Barton does not believe in monsters. And if such things did exist, he thinks, they would not be shivering women with torn feet. Some minor part of his mind supposes it’s poetic irony that he finds the Magisterium’s deadliest asset bleeding on the tiles of a small town church. The rest of his brain is focused solely on the figure below him. She is badly injured and apparently unarmed but he keeps his distance. He’s seen her snap men’s necks and break bones with a flick of her slim fingers and he hasn’t spent this long tracking the infamous assassin just to become another fatality.

He inches closer with an arrow trained on her chest. Kira, his dæmon, circles above them uneasily. She does not know why Clint is taking so long. Neither does he. With each passing moment it becomes more likely that other Church agents will arrive. He knows Fury would have already put a bullet between the Black Widow’s green eyes given a chance like this.

She inhales sharply and props herself up with a shaky arm. She is pale from blood loss, a fact only accentuated by her flaming red hair . If he leaves her for much longer he won’t even have to shoot her.

Kira lands on his shoulder to chitter a warning in his ear. There are at least two people approaching the church from the narrow eastern road. Probably civilians but still, it’s well past time to go. Not for the first time, Clint is grateful to have a dæmon with such good hearing. ( Especially when his own is so bad. )

The Black Widow smiles with some close relative to amusement at the agitated little bat. There is no fear in her eyes. If anything, Clint would say she looks... _tired_.

“You should hurry.” Her voice is surprisingly steady.

“Do you want me to?” He asks. The tip of his arrow is almost scraping her neck.

She snorts, a sudden incongruent noise that startles Clint. It is not the sort of noise you expect from what is almost certainly the most deadly woman in the country. Blood trickles down her face as she laughs.

It’s the snort that clinches the decision for him though, in the years to come, he will wonder if he had made his choice the moment he saw the broken figure lying in the shadow of the altar.

He lowers his weapon.

The Black Widow just about manages to raise one questioning eyebrow before he slams the brunt of his bow into her temple.

In the back of his mind, Clint Barton notes that there has been no sign of the woman’s dæmon throughout the entire confrontation and casts a wary eye over the empty pews. Kira is wheeling above him again, occasionally diving to tug impatiently at his sandy hair. They both know that she is right. Mysteries of the soul could wait until after he had the lethal assassin contained and isolated from the equally lethal Magisterium.

Kira hears the door creak open before he sees it but Clint already has an arrow at the ready and is seconds from letting it fly into the interloper’s chest before he recognises the man’s face. His dæmon, a shaggy little cocker spaniel, greets Kira with a respectful yap. With relief, Clint realises this means a back up unit has arrived. They are somewhat surprised when they see the Widow is still breathing but Clint is the senior officer and they (wisely) decide to let the matter go. ( But they all make mental notes to be out of office when the time comes to tell Fury. )


	2. Colleagues

It is months before Clint sees the Black Widow again. Her punches are extraordinarily powerful for someone who was on the brink of death less than half a year before. He leaves that particular training session bruised in half a dozen places and grudgingly tells her physical therapist that she is making a remarkable recovery.

____

The next time he sees her is in a S.H.I.E.L.D. canteen, eating alone. She does not look up but he gets a sense that she knows he is there anyway. Kira notices the other dæmons in the room will not look at her. He does not approach her (but he wants to).

____

It takes two years, seven missions and at least one shared near-death experience before Clint builds up the courage to ask her the question. They are waiting to meet a contact in a dismal little London alleyway. It is, of course, raining.

“What happened to your dæmon?” It comes out more bluntly than he would have liked but he can’t think of any other way to say it.

Natasha shoots him a strange, appraising look. (He wonders when she started being ‘Natasha’ in his mind. She was never ‘the Black Widow’ anymore. Not even ‘Agent Romanoff’.) He still can’t tell what she is thinking but he thinks that _maybe_ she is about talk to him when they are interrupted by the arrival of their liaison.

_____

It begins to bother him. He doesn’t bring it up again but he watches her. He has known her for almost three and a half years now and while he might not go as far as to call her a friend she is definitely a _something_. Certainly, they work together well. Sometimes she even tells him jokes. Her humour is dorky and cynical and utterly her own.

He never sees a dæmon with her but she watches other people’s constantly. She is an expert at picking up tell-tale signs of deceit and discomfort in the animals’ faces during interrogations. Kira tells him it’s spooky but he can tell she’s just as fascinated with the spy as he is.

Natasha doesn’t like to talk about herself so Clint prizes every morsel of information he manages to extract from her. She knows at least fifteen different forms of hand to hand combat. She speaks six languages and writes in another two. She can construct chemical weapons with the contents of an average kitchen but she can’t cook anything more complicated than scrambled eggs and toast. She has a soft spot for children. Kira tells him that she sings to herself when she thinks no-one can hear her. Clint doesn’t understand how anyone could really believe that Natasha is soulless.


	3. Something Else

They don’t discuss dæmons again until she finds him shaking and clutching Kira to his chest on the floor of the sparring room in their current base. Natasha doesn’t ask them what happened or offer blithe words of comfort. Instead she sits crosslegged on the wooden floor behind him and waits. Clint leans back towards her instinctively. She tenses for a fraction of a second before adjusting her position to accommodate him. She doesn’t budge as he puts his weight against her except to rest her head on top of his. He breaks the silence first. (He almost always does.)

“We wanted to see how far we could go. Apart. We’d never even tried that before, isn’t that strange?” The words scrape against his raw throat but he needs to say them. “It _hurts_ , Nat. I can’t imagine anything worse. How do you do it?”

“Do what?” Her voice is muffled slightly by his hair.

“Go so far from your dæmon.” It had seemed so obvious to him this morning that the reason he’d never seen Natasha with her dæmon was because they could separate themselves from each other, like the witches could. Of course, once the idea had occurred to him, he and Kira had wanted to test their own limits. Decades of intelligence work and an unfortunate amount of torture hadn’t prepared them for the sheer, penetrating pain of it.

Her arms wrap around his waist and he remembers, for one absurd instant, how strong she is. She could probably break his spine right now if she felt like it. He finds that this doesn’t worry him.

“Clint, you fucking idiot,” she sighs. Kira, still huddled in his hands, looks at them both in confusion. “I’m barely ever even a foot away from Kaz.”

“Kaz?” He repeats stupidly. Natasha would roll her eyes if he was able to see them.

“Kazimir. He’s a quiet little shit. You might as well introduce yourself.” The last comment seems to be directed at the ceiling.

There’s a stagnant pause before Clint sees the spider, descending towards them on a delicate silver thread. He’s not surprised he hasn’t noticed it before, the thing is _tiny_. It’s only when the dæmon passes a few inches from his face that he notices the pattern of red dots and a hint of a white line across its back.

Natasha Romanoff’s dæmon is a black widow. He can’t help but laugh. It makes perfect, absurd sense.

Natasha swats the back of his head fondly just as the spider drops to the floor beside him. Kira chirps curiously in its direction and it takes a moment for him to appreciate that she is struggling to ‘see’ such a small creature. He whispers a description to her. Clint often relates visual details to Kira but he has never felt quite so self-conscious about doing so. He is, after all, describing the physical manifestation of Natasha’s soul with her right behind him.

When he finishes, Kira launches herself off his hands and clumsily drags herself over to the other dæmon. It’s obvious that her little body isn’t meant for ground travel. She comes to an awkward, uncertain halt a few inches away from the spider. Natasha watches them for a moment before speaking.

“Spider dæmons get a bad rep, superstition combined with arachnophobia I guess.” Her voice is soft, he has to strain to hear her. “But he’s pretty harmless, the males are barely even venomous.”

Kazimir skitters forwards suddenly and the unexpected burst of movement surprises Kira into momentary inertia. He takes the opportunity to creep right in front of her face and probe her nose with one slender leg, almost playfully.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Clint asks, then realises Natasha hasn’t been following his train of thought and elaborates. “All those rumours going around about you not having a soul?”

He feels Natasha shrug and wishes that he could see her face.

Kira huffs bemusedly at Kaz, who is still toying with her nose, and inadvertently blows him backwards. He spins to a stop almost two feet away from her and Clint is struck by how light Natasha’s dæmon must be. Does she worry about how delicate he is? How easy it would be to crush him? Clint’s never known anyone with such a small dæmon before and he can’t help himself from fretting on their behalf. He knows it’s ridiculous. Natasha and Kazimir are obviously well capable of looking after themselves.

Natasha shifts marginally behind him but it’s enough to rouse Clint from his little reverie. He untangles himself gently from her grip and stands up. Natasha is slower to rise, extending a careless hand to Kazi as she does. He leaps onto it immediately and scurries up her arm and neck, quickly disappearing into her scarlet curls. Clint realises he is staring and looks away. Natasha doesn’t seem to notice.

“Don’t try separating again.” Her tone is kind but it’s clear that this is not a request. Truth be told, he’d almost forgotten his painful little experiment.

“Yes ma’am,” he drawls dutifully. It’s one particular order he’ll have no qualms with obeying. Kira flaps her way onto his shoulder and nuzzles him affectionately.

Natasha nods curtly, satisfied with his response, and strides out the door without looking back. Clint watches her go with a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth.

“Soulless,” he scoffs quietly. The idea has never seemed more absurd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~  
> This was a lot of fun, I might write a follow up Avengers piece with the rest of the team...Steve's dæmon would definitely be a Golden Retriever...not sure about the rest! (Suggestions are, of course, always welcome.)  
> ~

**Author's Note:**

> ~  
> For those of you who like specifics, Clint's dæmon is a lesser horseshoe bat. ( A small, common species found in Europe, Africa, Asia and certain parts of Australia. They're extremely agile in flight but unable to walk on all fours at all. Like most bats, they hunt with echolocation. )  
> ~


End file.
